Experimenting with AeroScenery

  • Tonight as an experiment I made one large size 9 scenery tile of Milford Haven in West Wales using ONLY levels 9 and 12 which speeds up the production of scenery at an incredible rate with reasonable quality images, see what you think? Normally one tile of this size takes anything up to 2 hours to process, with this experimental work it took less than 15 minutes.

    At 10,000 feet

    At 2500 feet

    At 2500 feet

    At 14, 000 feet

    Best wishes, Michael :)

  • Tonight as an experiment I made one large size 9 scenery tile

    Hello Michael,

    regarding the duration of tile generation, I made a benchmark for you.

    Area: Birnigham (no water tiles) Size 9 with 2.3m resolution.

    Specs: CPU I7-6700K @4GHz, SSD+SSD, 32GB DDR4 RAM, GTX 1070, 100 MBit Internet Access

    Downloading: 4min 30sec (with average 0.75MByte/s)

    Stitching: 1min 30 sec

    Geoconvertion 9,10,11,12: 17 min

    Geoconvertion 9,12: 6.5 min

    Geoconvertion 9,10,11,12: 7min

    Please see the caching effect of conversion 2 and 3. (I did not close Aeroscenery between them)

    So it seems, that the additional time for tile 10 and 11 only adds a small amount to the conversion time.

    This also gets clear when you look at the count of tiles depending on level:

    Lev9 = 1 tile

    Lev10= 4 tiles

    Lev11= 16 tiles

    Lev12= 64 tiles

    I did not convert Lev13 with 256 tiles, though that would be adequate to 2.3m resolution.

    The tile count increases by 2x2 from step to step.

    Cheers, Thomas


    Edited 4 times, last by TomSimMuc (November 17, 2019 at 11:03 PM).

  • Many thanks Thomas for your bench testing. I have just completed mine for the same tests:

    Download = 12 minutes

    Stitching = 3 minutes

    Geo Convert: Lev 9 (1 Tile) = 1 minute, Lev 11 (16 Tiles) = 5 minutes and Lev 12 (64 Tiles) = 20 minutes

    My computer is running Windows 7, Intel Pentium CPU G2130 at 3.2 GHz, RAM = 16 GB, and the GPU GTX 960

    The "killer" in time is Lev 13 with 256 tiles to process which on my PC which can take up to 2 hours.

    From my earlier experiments if you ONLY use Lev 9, 11 and 12 there is no point in downloading higher resolution images, in fact 4.777 M/PIX is perfectly fine.

    However if you use 2.389 M/PIX then using Lev 13 (256 Tiles) is the way to go.

    From the aircraft cockpit view using the 4.777 M/PIX you have good sharp scenery at 3500 feet, using the better resolution of 2.389 M/PIX you can drop to 2500 feet.

    Its certainly been time well spent.

    Kindest regards as always, cheers, Michael.

    Best wishes, Michael :)

  • Thank you Michael for publishing your benching values too.

    So it seems, that our geoconvert speed up to level 12 is nearly identical.

    You are right, as a typical low height flyer, I normally prefer 2.3m with Lev13, but that takes time and produces bigger files. But it is worth the effort imho.

    Cheers, Thomas


    Edited once, last by TomSimMuc (November 17, 2019 at 11:03 PM).

  • I can't think of a good reason why GeoConvert is so slow to be honest. Most of us are running it on really fast PCs and SSDs.

    6 and 8 core chips should chew through this stuff if it's multi-threaded.

    Even if you're resampling, converting an image format, compressing, and cutting up a large image into smaller chunks it's hard to end up at 2 hours unless you're doing thousands or tens of thousands of operations.

    When I first wrote AeroScenery I said that IPACS should just open source GeoConvert so the community can fix it and optimise it. It's clear that IPACS don't have time to, which is understandable. I still stand by that.

    AeroScenery - Easily create photoreal scenery for Aerofly

  • I can't think of a good reason why GeoConvert is so slow to be honest.

    Hello Nick,

    thank you for pointing out that Geoconvert is unnecessary slow.

    I assume you get similar results when you run the bechmark as Michael and Me did them?

    Please see details in #7: Experimenting with AeroScenery

    Cheers, Thomas


    Edited once, last by TomSimMuc (November 18, 2019 at 11:00 AM).

  • Those sliders are THE chance to make the orthos more vivid and life without any punishment on the processing time.

    You can even load a reference picture from the recent download, see direct live your adjustments on it and then start the stitching, aid and geoconversion.

    With only those checkmarks set.

    Alternative procedure:

    You do the stiching, including the brightness/color correction.

    Then you open the stiched files with PS or Gimp to remove cloudes, planes on airports etc.

    Then you only checkmark aid and Geoconvert und START (the conversion)

    Cheers, Thomas


    Edited 2 times, last by TomSimMuc (November 18, 2019 at 6:06 PM).

  • Hi both Thomas's,

    Well today using my art editing I managed to chop bits of good scenery images and paste them over areas of cloud and shadow, then re colour to match the saved tile. Took a little time the first go but now I can do it very quickly.

    I have re made one tile for the Isle of Man Project which completely removes all the cloud and shadow cover.

    I will share this in the next few days.

    Now off to bed for a very well earned rest.

    Cheers Michael.

    PS.

    BEFORE

    AFTER

    Best wishes, Michael :)

    Edited 3 times, last by IZ0JUB (November 19, 2019 at 10:22 AM).